Approved: Julia Holter – Goddess Eyes

Many, many critics (even those impossible-to-please Pitchfork types) have been swarming adoringly of late over ‘In The Same Room’, the latest preview of LA soloist Julia Holter’s forthcoming LP ‘Ekstasis’.

While ‘In The Same Room’ is really very good indeed (as you’ll note by tuning in here), I’d rather talk about album track ‘Goddess Eyes’ (which also appeared in an earlier form on her 2011 album, ‘Tragedy’), having first heard it featured on Young Turks’ recent FBi Radio takeover mix, and been duly stunned.

Far too skeletal to be deemed a pop song in the traditional sense, it instead takes the scant shape of everything a great pop song should be. A knot of spectral, glassy-eyed minimalism sculpted around a single, repeated line; refrain and counter-refrain are kept at close odds, rarely is so much transfixed in so bare, so basic a form.

‘Ekstasis’ isn’t released until 8 Mar (via RVNG Intl), but you can look into ‘Goddess Eyes’ right this very moment: